Gérald Toto Shares a Natural Longing and Love on ‘You Got Me’

Gérald Toto teams up with Temple Caché for the sensual visual of "You Got Me."

Washed with surreal water color strokes and bright hues, the visual for Gérald Toto‘s “You Got Me” is captivating through its simplicity and honesty. Teaming up with Cannes-nominated French agency Temple Caché, “You Got Me” reflects Toto’s whimsical melody and love for nature, all while connecting depression and love in a frutiful manner. Taken off his latest album, Sway, the French-Antillean artist’s promising perspective melds sweetly against Temple Caché’s hands.

Marion Castéra, Lia Bertels and Gwendoline Gamboa, the core animators, take a sensual approach and illustrate common habits and tasks. The pastel kissed opening scene sees a lonely chef crooning Toto’s line, “you got my heart, you got my sorrow” before highlighting the rest of the neighborhood. Absurd appearances and transformations pan with an effortless fluidity, it’s hard to not be transfixed by the animation.


“The sensualist acidulated video for ‘You Got Me’, through the depiction of seemingly anodyne daily gestures like cooking, sunbathing, a cat grooming himself; reveals the life of the inhabitants of a neighbourhood soaked with desire, pleasure & stolen moments, often in connection with nature,” explains Toto. “But under the luscious joy of the colours, humour & earthiness, surfaces a sense of longing and loneliness.”

A longing does appear every now and then from the characters but never does it weigh heavy.  Loneliness comes across naturally and as a minor element to a bigger picture, if you choose to see it that way. The track’s natural tropical percussion, and easy listening guitar, aids the video’s dreamy scenery and narrative by its characters.

Returning back to the scene in the kitchen towards the end, the video’s symbolism is reiterated by Toto’s continued explanation: “As in cooking, love and the romantic relationship require generosity, presence and time. We must make ourselves consciously available, consent to the vulnerability of laying bare and let go.”


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